Cuba!
by PiecesOfEight
Summary: Post-AWE "Cotton's parrot was still... well, it was a parrot. It wasn't a seashell or something stupid like that." They head for the Fountain of Life, but don't quite make it.


The little dingy must have been miles away from the Pearl, still moored at the dock whilst Jack was off courting other men's women and drinking rum to his heart's content. It had been easy, stealing the Pearl while Gibbs slept, hugging his teddy bear as tight as a mother holds her newborn.

Barbosa had thought it all well and good until he'd found a hole in the map bigger than his head.

Bigger than his _hat_.

He cursed the man who had so long ago forsaken him, and had hoodwinked them all time and again. 'Sparrow!'

'You rang?'

Barbosa turned around, and sure enough, standing behind him was the pirate they'd all come to know and lo—hate.

Or love. They couldn't remember, what with all the rum.

'How did you--?' Barbosa spluttered, watching the other Pirate Lord intently.

'How did I find you? It wasn't all that difficult, mate, to be perfectly honest. Big ship, see, easy to spot from a distance.'

Jack staggered across the deck and went below. Barbosa remained where he was, calming his nerves. Moments later, Jack was back, carrying more rum in his arms than one man could ever hope to drink in a sitting.

But he wasn't a man. He was a pirate.

He wasn't one pirate either. Add in Goat Jack, Cell Jack, Fish Jack, Shot Jack, Peanut Jack, and the rest of them, and we were really talking about… one, two, three-- more pirates than one can count on two hands.

'Where're we off to anyway, lads? Tortuga?' Jack put the rum down in front of him and opened one bottle, taking a hearty swig and licking his lips.

'Our insights are not so trivial, Jack. Now, we'd be heading for the island you govern first, but seeing how you'd escape… So we be off to the Fountain of Life.'

'Fountain of Life? Does it rain small children, or something?'

Barbosa rolled his eyes at the other pirate's grin. This ship was like a Jack magnet. No matter how many times you throw him to the sharks, he keeps coming back.

Either that, or Jack couldn't get enough of him – Barbosa.

But he preferred not to believe that option.

'And what makes ye think we be taking you along for the ride?'

Jack's grin widened as he took a step back, and toppled over a barrel. He stood hastily, and continued. 'I've got the charts, y'see. The charts and the heading.'

XoX

'Y'know, Hector, I do believe there is one person missing from our little venture, and I don't think I can carry on without said person.'

Barbosa rolled his eyes. 'And where be said person?'

'Oh, here and there, and everywhere but all at once. Mostly… Port Royal.' Jack said all this very fast, in his unique accent topped with a bit (or a lot, you couldn't tell anymore) of rum.

'Mrs. Turner?'

'Aye. Dear ole Lizzie.'

'Yer not feelin'… sentimental, are ye? First venture without her… ye be missin' her!'

'Yes. That is to say, no but when we were in tight jams always seemed to be her men—'

'_Men_?'

'—Aye, men – that saved us. I wouldn' feel right if we set out without said fortune and came to an… untimely fate of some sort – not, that we would come to any fate at all by any means other than our own which cause the plunder and fall of all that is said to be done, said, done, or said and done by any which means we were to choose.'

Hector had to think about this. It was all very fast and very complex and very… Jack. 'Aye, ye be right. I think'

A grin swept Jack's features. 'To Port Royal, then.'

XoX

Elizabeth sat looking out upon the ocean, once again imagining that day ten years in the future when she would see his ship on the horizon again.

She often tricked herself into seeing the pirate's ship in the distance. She kept replaying the moment he'd died in her head, wishing it had never happened.

Because wishing is _bound_ to work.

She closed her eyes, and when she opened them the ship was there, just as it had been there the day before, and the day before, and – I think we got it. It looked older, somehow. Blackened, even.

It took her a while to figure out it was a different ship. But then, the same ship, just a different one than _she_ had thought.

Elizabeth actually felt happy to see the Pearl sailing towards port again. There wasn't a reason of course, but just a taste of that pirate world was what she needed.

And by taste, she didn't mean kiss.

Not again.

She went out to the docks to meet them as they came. It was all the same.

Barbosa was still obsessed with hats.

Marty was still short.

Cotton still couldn't talk.

Jack (the monkey) was still a trickster.

Gibbs was still kind.

Jack still made the air around him smell like rum.

And Cotton's parrot was still… well, it was still a parrot. It wasn't a seashell or anything stupid like that.

'Lizzie!' Jack's familiar slur called to her.

'Come to kidnap me again?' She smiled at Barbosa as he walked down to greet her.

'Aye, in a sense we have.' Her mind began to wander, imagining the next adventure, musing how it would be different without Will.

'Oh really?' She narrowed her eyes at Jack.

'Dear ole Lizzie, how'd you like to be _immortal_?'

Elizabeth was taken aback. 'I-Immortal?'

'Means you never die.'

'I _know_ what it means. And you'd have the means to make us immortal?'

'I might have said means, but these be the means I choose and these means may or may not coincide with the means of your choosing, or of Barbosa, or of Cotton's parrot. But these be the best means we have.'

'Alright then. What is this method of immortality?'

'Water.'

'Water?' Elizabeth scoffed. 'You're wasting my time.'

Barbosa took another step down the gangplank. ''Tisn't just any water. This water comes from a very special place.'

Elizabeth looked intrigued. 'And where _does_ it come from?'

'Cuba!' Jack gave her a wicked smile.

Barbosa rolled his eyes at the idiotic outburst.

Cuba, honestly.

'We be going to the Fountain of Life.'


End file.
